Category: Releases

As published in Americana Highways on July 28, 2019 

If laughter is the best medicine and music soothes the soul while taming the savage beast, we could use more Shinyribs in our lives right now.

Luckily, that joyful, Austin-based “psycho-active gulf coast funk ʼn soul” outfit (to quote their motto from an old t-shirt design) has got that medicine and brings it once again on the delightfully upbeat and at times downright silly Fog & Bling, their latest release (June 14th) from Mustard Lid Records.

The goofy, infectious fun begins right from the start with the R & B tune “Sing It Right,” wherein Mr. Shinyribs himself (Kevin “Kev” Russell, aka, the former frontman for The Gourds) intones the songʼs preamble in a nasally, muted police dispatcher voice: “Breaker 1-9… we got a big ʼol country boy down on I-10 East… Says heʼs a singer for a band… called Shinyribs!”

As the band cranks up the beat, Russell proceeds to lay down the rules for doing what the songʼs title says:

Sing it right, try to keep it in time
Oh, sing it right, do not walk on my rhyme
Know all the words and the way that they feel
Oh, sing it right, make it roll, make it real

Buoyed by longtime drummer Keith Langfordʼs solid timekeeping and Jeff Brownʼs funky basslines, and aided & abetted by Winfield Cheekʼs keyboards along with the tasty riffs of the Tijuana Trainwreck Horns (Tiger Anaya and Mark Wilson) and the sassily soulful backing vocals of Kelley Mickwee and Alice Spencer (aka, The Shiny Soul Sisters), Russell exhorts the would-be singer to

Try to transcend the song, but keep the beat where it belongs
It donʼt last long, so
Sing it right in the night, when the lights are all down
Sing it right, keep it tight, like a kite come unwound

That last line aptly captures the slightly unmoored, free-spirited precision of the album as a whole. In contrast to 2017ʼs solid I Got Your Medicine, which features some stellar songwriting but seems slightly subdued at times (at least in contrast to the bandʼs hyper-lively onstage presence), Fog & Bling comes across like a hopped-up, horn-tooting dance party teetering on the edge of all-out delirium. In that respect it nicely captures the kinetic energy of the bandʼs live shows, complete with Russellʼs arsenal of goofball moans, groans, a-haʼs, oh-noʼs, gurgling yawps and other forms of rhythmic breath-gymnastics. (If only it could capture his nimble dance moves!) Itʼs those interjections, along with the quick song transitions and spontaneous sounding vocal takes that kick Fog & Bling up a notch from its solid predecessor.

Among Fog & Blingʼs highlights are the jaunty “Iʼm Clean,” with its knowingly ludicrous similes (“Clean as a preacherʼs socks / Clean as the keys to the prisonʼs locks / Clean as a gin drink on the rocks”); the ultra-catchy “Hoods of Cars,” which celebrates the lazy times “we let slip slowly away / Following jewels in the tar, layinʼ on the hoods of cars,” noting how “It ainʼt ever in the movies, more taboo than boobies / Baby thatʼs how it feels”; and the rocking paean to friendships cemented via the crazy hardships shared by touring bands, “The Good Times and the Bad.” The surreal ups and downs of life on the road are perfectly captured by that songʼs final verses:

Stayed home in droves for a must-see band
Spent the night in a taco stand
At least it was warm
I could stretch my legs
Woke up next morning smelled like eggs

Roof of the van in the starlight
Still high from the show that night
Driving home something wasnʼt right
Flat tire, no spare.

And then thereʼs the irresistable “Got Sum,” with its jokingly jealous lamentations about how:

They all got money
They all got booty
They all got all that they want

The way they flaunt it
It just haunts me
There oughta be a law

…Everybody got sum, but I ainʼt got none!

The confessional, zeitgeist-summarizing “Crazy Lonely” is another type of lament altogether, with its incisive observations on the deep loneliness that undercuts our social media obsessed age:

I feel like a failure
most of the time
So many dreams
have died on the vine

When weʼre together
we just sit there and stare
At our phones glowing
and we ainʼt even there

For my money, though, the true standouts on this album full of shiny nuggets are the radically contrasting “Highway of Diamonds” — the one slow ballad on the album — and the giddy come-on of a closer, “Doing It With You.” Along with its sweetly high-lonesome chorus, the former features such beautifully evocative lyrics as

Laughed at and left out, sold into self-doubt
Wallflowers grow wild with time
Now nights filled with jewels, city glow & vines…
Highway of diamonds, hereʼs to the shy ones
Under the stars, like rivers we run

“Doing It,” on the other hand, finds Russell bouncing between crooning suggestively to his lady love and laughing at the faux sauvity of his insinuations:

Oooh-wee baby, whereʼd you find
that sense of humor
and that filthy mind?

Now letʼs get together,
you and me
I need a date — canʼt wait
Maybe 2 or 3

The song gets sillier as it goes, culminating in howlers like “I got no scruples / You can tell Iʼm in love / Take a look at my pupils.” Itʼs impossible to resist the “Iʼm high and I canʼt lie” vibe of the tuneʼs bouncing chorus:

If you wanna party, Iʼll party with ya
Ya wanna be tardy, Iʼll be tardy too
Ya wanna get drunk
Well Iʼll get drunk with ya
Stumblinʼ in the park after dark
Well, you know what to do

The live snippet the band tucks onto the albumʼs end — which sounds like a surreptitiously recorded excerpt from a particularly high-spirited band practice — plants a lampshade-style cap on the albumʼs carefree vibe. As the band bumps and grinds away disco-style, Russell comedically improvises the lyrics. “This is called ʼLoosen Up,ʼ” he laughs:

You gotta loosen up,
Loosen up, movinʼ up,
Booze it up, loosen up… Yea-ahh!

He continues riffing on the title a la Richard Simmons exhorting an aerobics classʼs attendees to keep their cardio rates up, until the band falls back into a slow crawl and Russell ad libs, “Laser wash… laser wash, itʼs a laser wash / Put the ky-bosh on your laser wash — itʼs all closed down!” Then as the band abruptly stops, Russell delivers the coup de grace with a deadpanned, deflationary quip: “Letʼs go get some tacos.” Itʼs a comedically perfect ending to this expertly loosey-goosey, joy inducing gem of an album.

__________

Music, videos, merch and tour dates can be found at shinyribs.org .

As published in Americana Highways on May 2, 2019

Unbeknownst to many, the Gloria Dei (aka, Old Swedes’) Episcopalian Church in the historic Queen Village area of Philadelphia has been home to a burgeoning Americana-centered music scene. Fostered by the church’s on- site Sexton, Jim Minacci, and his wife Paula, their Sexton Sideshow collaborative has been welcoming up-and-coming as well as established singer-songwriters and bands to their monthly musical Sunday brunches and related events for almost a decade.

During these collegial brunches, the musicians take turns performing for each other while their cohorts chow down on pancakes, pastries and scrambled eggs; when not performing or eating, they’re free to supply helpful feedback, forge new musical alliances and simply enjoy the camaraderie of fellow artists.

Later this month the Minaccis will be hosting their 8th annual Memorial Day music fest and family picnic, which typically runs all day in the church’s adjoining walled-in yard. (The schedule for this year’s festival can be found at https://www.facebook.com/SextonSideshow/ .) Jim has also curated Wednesday night Live Local shows and Vinyl Nights at the nearby Irish bar For Pete’s Sake for the past several years, along with all-day Make Music Philly events in the church sanctuary.

The Minaccis do all this because they love live local music (not just Americana and roots music, but pop-rock, rap, and folk as well) and because they know how game-changing it can be for musicians to feel that they are part of a caring, supportive community. As the Sexton Sideshow Facebook page puts it: “Our hope and mission for Sexton Sideshow is to bring our community together in a safe place to enjoy incredible homegrown music, delicious food and to interact with the community and build fellowship.”

’Tis a beautiful and wondrous thing, this community they’ve nurtured, and the Philadelphia music scene has been the lucky beneficiary of the Minaccis’ stewardship. Over the years the Minacci collective has helped launch and/or support such notable Philly-area bands as Cowmuddy, John Faye & Those Meddling Kids, John Train, Hannah Taylor & the Rekardo Lee Trio, Hurricane Hoss, LadyFingers, Low Cut Connie, Macadocious, No Good Sister, Pawnshop Roses, Sweetbriar Rose, The River Bones and Uke Ellington, as well as individual artists like Mike “Slow-Mo” Brenner, T.C. Cole, Jessica Grae, Marion Halliday, Every Heard, Kuf Knotz, Julia Levitina, Shakey Lyman, the Revr’end TJ McGlinchy, Andrea Nardello, Ben O’Neill, Morgan Pinkstone, Sara B Simpson, and many, many others.1

One of the best known and at this point longest-tenured bands to spring from the fertile grounds of Gloria Dei is The Midnight Singers, formerly known as The North Lawrence Midnight Singers. Centered on acoustic guitarist/vocalist Jamie Olson, who also pens the lyrics for most of the band’s songs, lead guitar player and supporting vocalist Todd Zamostien, and bassist/vocalist Nick Mazzuca, the Singers have been a fixture in the Minaccis’ extended musical family in one form or another for the past decade or so. Along with their full band appearances, Olson has played solo at Gloria Dei many times, while Zamostien has played under the moniker Bastards of Earle, his solo side project.

The Singers’ 2010 sophomore release, Last Great Saturday Night, was named the #1 Local Album by readers of radio station XPN’s local music-focused website The Key, but they’ve released just one EP since then. Their third and latest full album, Nowhere Else, sees them honing their rootsy, Jayhawks and Gram Parsons-infused sound while further extending their already wide circle of contributing players. Reflecting the community-minded ethos of the Minaccis, the insert for the vinyl version of the album features a photo-collage of the “great SINGERS community” (aka, the record’s contributors), that includes no fewer than 23 individual musicians and engineers.

Clearly, the Singers embrace the “it takes a village” approach to music- making. As a result, Nowhere Else’s eight tunes feel packed to the gills with goodness.

Olson’s lyrics are simple and direct but abundantly hooky, and the hummable, airy melodies afford the band members — particularly guitar tone-master Zamostien — ample room to add a constant but varying stream of sonic supplements, whether in the form of effects-pedal tones, layered vocal harmonies, or rhythmic shifts and stops. Longtime drummer and local session musician Cornelius Simpkins anchors the album masterfully with his solid and subtly dynamic timekeeping.

A perfect example of this winning blend can be found ultra ear-wormy “California,” in which the singer begs a friend to “tell me all you know about California” since “this here east is killing me.” “Could it be that little slice of heaven for me?” the protagonist wonders; “train runnin’ thru my head / won’t let me rest / all aboard headin’ west / I wanna smile like you.”

It’s a simple song about a common desire: to find a better, happier place to live. While Olson’s yearning vocals — whose timbre resembles that of former Jayhawk Mark Olson (no relation) — paint that picture, the band adds some flangey guitar vibes, a loping bass line, some organ flavoring, sweet vocal harmonies, and a steadily thumping drum line. It’s a 4:07 minute masterpiece of sonic evocativeness.

Other highlights include “Hey Pilot,” with its gripping tale of a passenger’s worried concern about a pilot’s desperate, possibly suicidal state of mind; the rootsy “Fine Dust,” with its greasy slide guitar accents, cool stops, and bumpin’ bass line; the bouncy, impossibly catchy “Rabbit on the Run”; and the album’s alternately rockin’ and delicate closer, “Mother of Mercy.”

Though I’ve singled those five tracks out, all eight of the album’s cuts are strong — there’s not a lemon in the bunch — and together they create a pleasantly diverse yet tightly coherent musical tapestry. If you’re in the mood for some simple but affecting lyricism, climbing vocal harmonies, super-solid ensemble playing, and alternately chimey, twangy and trebly guitar tones, I heartily recommend this latest effort from one of Philly’s best Americana/roots outfits.

And if you’re ever in town, make sure you check out one of the many Sexton Sideshow-sponsored musical events at Gloria Dei. Don’t forget to thank the Minaccis for all the great local music they’ve been incubating.

_________

More info on the Midnight Singers can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/ midnightsingers/

The album Nowhere Else, along with their EP Rockin’ the Neighborhood and Last Great Saturday Night (as The North Lawrence Midnight Singers) can be found on iTunes and other streaming services.

_________

1 Some other great Philadelphia-area Americana acts that haven’t been directly involved in the Minaccis’ downtown community but that also reflect the Philly area’s vibrant Americana/Roots scene include The Wissahicken Boys, The Twenty-Niners, Hezekiah Jones, Wheelhouse, Slowey & the Boats, Sparklepony, The Miners, Cavan Curren, and a bit further south (in and around Wilmington, DE), Michael Davis’s long-running rockabilly band The Bullets, The Quixote Project and Couple Days. And that’s just the acts I am personally acquainted with; there are doubtless many others equally worthy of mention.

I would be remiss not to mention also Philly’s vibrant and long-running folk scene, centered around the Philadelphia Folk Festival, which is going on its 58th year now.

As published in Americana Highways on March 22, 2019 

While plenty of bands have mixed bits of hard rock or punk flavoring into their Americana / Alt Country sound — Whiskeytown, the Waco Brothers, Old 97s and Uncle Tupelo all come quickly to mind — few have completely changed course and jumped directly from rock’s basic aesthetic, with its three-chords- and-some-angst sonic palette, to the more musically challenging and nuanced genre of bluegrass. But that’s essentially what the defiantly named Who? What? When? Why? & Werewolves? did in evolving from long-time Philadelphia rockers The Tressles into their current form as the 6W’s.

Not that their cheekily-named debut album Greatest Hits, to be released on March 29, doesn’t have a punkish attitude of its own. The band’s obscure, intentionally unwieldy name indicates right up front that it doesn’t give a fuck about what Music Row thinks. As band leader and songwriter Andrew Fullerton explains regarding the album’s impetus: “I think you get to a certain point in your life, and you really have to ask yourself what you’re making music for. With the state of the music industry being what it is, there’s not much point in making a record unless you feel really driven to create something.”

Hence, their website explains, 6W’s intention on this album is to “celebrate making music purely for the sake of creation” while “championing the stories of everyday people trying to make their way in this crazy life.” The title Greatest Hits speaks to the band’s deliberate refusal to concern themselves with any notion of trying to produce “hits.” “As I’ve gotten older, the scope of my life has gotten narrower,” Fullerton, who works as an executive chef at a Delaware-based restaurant, explains. “I go to work, I see my family, I play in this band, and that little life, it’s perfect for me. If people don’t care about my music, it’s still good enough for me.”

As for the impetus behind the band’s radical genre change, Fullerton relates, “People would always tell me [when they were in The Tressels] ‘You write such beautiful, thoughtful lyrics, but we can’t ever hear them,’ so it was somewhat motivated by an interest in showcasing the lyrical content a bit more.” Of course, he adds with a wry laugh, “But to be honest, we just got tired of carrying so much gear around.”

Whatever the truth of that last statement, Fullerton’s literate yet earthy lyrics really do shine on Greatest Hits, along with banjo player Matt Orlando’s vocal harmonies and Pete Clark’s fiddle playing. Fullerton and Orlando have been playing music together for 15 years; their prior tenure with The Tressels — which released eight full length albums and gained a serious local reputation before calling it quits — helped them hone their vocal harmonies to the point where their seamless blending causes many listeners to mistake them for brothers. Throw in Clark’s fiddle and some nimble upright bass playing by Brian Grabski and you have all the necessary ingredients for a highly listenable yet intense, emotional brand of progressive indie-folk-bluegrass (for lack of a better term).

Mixed by Kyle Pulley and tracked by Mark Watter of Lizdelise at the Headroom in the gritty Kensington area of Philadelphia — where bands like Hop Along, Kississippi and New Jersey rockers The Pine Barons previously recorded albums — the seven song album was recorded, edited, mixed and remixed in seven days. “Kyle Pulley, the mixing engineer, was on tour with his band Thin Lips so he wasn’t present for the tracking,” Fullerton recounts. “Which was actually really interesting because he sort of re-built the songs and made them more expansive. I’ve never worked with a mixing engineer who really cared about the songs themselves [and] not just the technical/sonic template aspect of the process.”

The collection’s opening track, “Bluebird,” begins as a worried-sounding folk ballad, but takes on a wild intensity as Orlando’s banjo and backing vocals kick in behind Fullerton’s lamentation (or warning?) that “There’s a hundred thousand miles on this lemon of a heart / It’s not forever, it’s a pretty good start.” “I wouldn’t lie to you,” he assures the listener, but then the tone shifts: “I know, it surprised me too / Raise your hand and tell me about the bluebird.”

The hundred thousand miles grow to a hundred million by the next pre-chorus; the melody continues as before, but the lyrics get replaced with moaning wordless “ooooh – ooooh – ooooh’s”; the vocals rise in intensity, and suddenly the song stops at 3:05 in. It restarts with quiet guitar strumming, to which banjo, bass and fiddle are incrementally added; the mileage grows to a hundred billion; the chorus kicks in again with an even wilder intensity, and the song ends with a five-note flourish that lands it right in the lap of the album’s next tune, which commences forthwith. It’s an audacious, whirlwindy and auspicious start to the album.

That next tune, “John Blonde Sing My Eulogy,” takes things in a different direction. The banjo rolls take primacy at first, with the guitars, fiddle and a piano gradually blending in quasi-orchestrally behind them. Meanwhile Fullerton’s darkly reedy vocals confide that “It might seem grey from far away/ But it’s a white flag that I’m waiving to my enemy.” Framed by the refrain “If it’s twenty-to-one, two hundred versus two hundred / It don’t matter, I can’t remember who won,” it’s hard to tell if this song is the lament of Civil War soldier longing to breach the battle lines and head home, or the tale of a teenage runaway’s gradually dawning remorse. Either way, it’s a powerfully affecting tune.

I have to share Fullerton’s story about the source of the catchy “Rattail” — which premiered here on Americana Highways — since it’s so quintessentially Philly:

“Rattail” is about growing up awkward. More specifically it’s about my younger brother Sean and the wicked rattail mullet he had in the 90’s because he worshipped Philadelphia Phillies first baseman John Kruk. I remember our parents fighting about the fact I dyed my hair blue when I was 14. I was ashamed and embarrassed that it mattered that much to either of them. But now that seems so insignificant in my life.

The moral of the story, he summarizes, is: “Don’t be afraid to be a weirdo, have a bad haircut or be awkward. Hair grows out.” Americana Highways’ editor Melissa Clarke aptly describes this song as “a coming-of-age saga” whose “fluid banjo and easy rhythms” mate with its “lyrical confession of vulnerability” to evoke deeply “nostalgic emotions.” Having personally embraced some pretty awful hair styles over the years I can definitely relate to the song’s sentiment, as I suspect many other listeners will as well.

“Wilma” is the creepiest and darkest song on the album, and also its most memorable tune. Told from the point of view of a hardscrabble, rail-riding psycho named Cyrus who stalks the song’s namesake heroine across country, the song strikes a disturbing psychological chord. With lyrics like “Tell all your lovers you love ‘em so / Watch who you’re sleeping with cause he’s the first to go,” and “You look surprised to see my face / I know you thought you had escaped / But I’ve got a couple things that I just needed to say / Don’t you try and get away, don’t you try and get away!”, this is the dark, over-the-top stalker tune your mother warned you about. It’s obsessive, casually threatening and openly menacing by turns, in the vein of the Louvin Brothers’ “Knoxville Girl” and Matthew Sweet’s “Winona.” The melody of that rising chorus will stick with you like a bad nightmare, too — though in a good, hummable way. The mournful fiddle and click-clacking percussion provide the perfect unsettling undercurrent.

“Tell Me a Secret” conveys a similar though less threatening darkness: a darkness of the secretive soul, if you will. Fullerton describes it as “a swampy front-porch-psychedelic-gospel tune.” “We were referencing the Black Keys and The Band a lot,” he explains. “I think we found a middle ground between those two influences on this song. The song is all about little wishes we make and little secrets we keep. Quitting smoking, getting to hash it out with ‘the one that got away.’ I did actually quit smoking for real after I wrote this song.”

The short and sweet rumbler “Stacy’s in the Army” references a drag queen Fullerton and Orlando befriended after a gig who they later discovered was an officer in the US Army. “His story really struck me because I’ve never served in the military, and I don’t think I could ever do it,” Fullerton says. “But you hear over and over that the army defends your freedom, and I thought, ‘Stacy is really living that mantra. He serves his country for the right to be able to live however he wants to, and for him that means the freedom to be Stacy.’” As the song’s chorus matter-of-factly puts it: “Stacy’s in the army wearing lingerie / Don’t know what the major general’s gonna say / But he’s out there fighting for us everyday.”

“Priscilla” highlights Fullerton’s dark lyricism and rounds out the album with a fittingly mournful yet strangely upbeat vibe. “You’re down in a hole that’s big enough for two / Well I’ll follow you down if you ask me to” the song begins, and it continues in that desperate vein. “I thought about my mother’s and my father’s bills / I thought of mixing vodka with NyQuil.” “And I thought of having faith, and I thought of having patience / But kids today have no imagination,” Fullerton intones over undulating banjo and fiddle swells. Memorable lines like “Some things arrive that you just can’t take back” and “We had no instructions just a whole lot of buttons / So you had to push them all” come in a rush before the song ends with the disturbing twin couplets: “Got no desire to be the best / I just had to be your bulletproof vest / They had to take your smile and the heart from your chest / I’ll prevent them from taking the rest.” As with the rest of the collection’s tunes, there’s no lack of drama here.

Though clocking in at a short 21:50 running time, Greatest Hits is a fully satisfying collection, thanks to its rich variety of lyrical perspectives and musical textures. And though technically a “debut” album, it has — not surprisingly, given the longtime collaboration of core band members Fullerton and Orlando — the confident feel of a more mature unit’s release, though there’s also an exuberance and surprise to it. In that sense it’s the best of both worlds. At the very least, it’s proof positive that playing music for its own sake — and not giving a shit about whether anyone else likes it or not — can definitely pay off.

———

More info on the Who? What? When? Why? & Werewolves?, including tour dates, can be found at: http://6wmusic.com .

Americana Highways’ world premiere of “Rattail” can be found at: https:// americanahighways.org/2019/01/30/song-premiere-rattail-by-who-what-when- why-and-werewolves-from-upcoming-album-greatest-hits/